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Muslims, Chinese Australians and Indigenous people most targeted in racist media coverage By Erwin Renaldi, Nazli Bahmani and Samuel Yang Posted Wed 11 Nov 2020 at 4:23am by the ABC When Nayma Bilal went to a Sydney beach wearing a niqab, a stranger walked up to her and told her to "get out of this country, you don't belong here". It is just one of several racist encounters she has faced while growing up in Australia, after emigrating from Bangladesh when she was four. "I grew up here and my brothers were born here. We're just as much Australian as you are," she responded to the stranger. Ms Bilal said Muslim women, especially those who wore face veils, were often misunderstood and the victims of overt racism in many parts of the media. "That's one of the most upsetting parts about media representation; when the media is focused so heavily on representing Muslims as terrorists and as bad people," the 19-year-old told the ABC. "It creates this unconscious bias in people's minds when they are interacting with Muslims. "It's quite disappointing that we're not given as many chances as other communities to actually voice our opinions and express who we are and what our religion consists [of]." A recent "media snapshot" study analysed race-related opinion pieces in mainstream Australian newspapers and television programs and found more than half involved negative depictions of race. The group analysed the articles by looking at the use of irony, harmful stereotypes, scaremongering, false ideas and broader context, and found some often "blurred the lines between legitimate political criticism and racist sentiments". Ms Bilal's frustration about racism in the media is also felt by other young women from minority backgrounds. Chinese Australian Yongyan Xia is from Grenfell in the central west of New South Wales and is studying biomedicine in Melbourne. When the COVID-19 pandemic started in Australia earlier this year she tried to avoid reading the news. "A lot of articles posted on Facebook say something like 'Chinese virus', 'don't get in contact with Chinese people because you'll get infected', that kind of thing. It feels really bad," Ms Xia said. "The words are quite misleading sometimes. It only tells a part of the truth in the whole title, without going into details." The All Together Now report cited op-eds which mocked Chinese cuisine by making reference to bats and Wuhan's wet market, or used wordplay on the Chinese zodiac Year of the Rat to imply betrayal. The coronavirus pandemic saw a rise in racism and xenophobia against Asian communities in Australia and Ms McLean said that had been exacerbated by some inflammatory social commentary in the media. Ms McLean said the group observed "increasing forms of covert racism that might be harder to detect". They included "dog whistling" — stoking racial fear without using explicit language — against Muslims, and forms of racism that ignored ongoing colonisation and destruction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. "Racial microaggressions and subtle undertones that are racist that exist across many news reporting sites and many of the interviews or ways in which people are portrayed are really underpinned by that," she said. "There is clearly a link between a lack of diversity in Australian journalism and the way issues of race, religion and culture are covered in this country,. We believe newsrooms must change to better reflect the audiences they serve" spokesman Adam Portelli told the ABC.